


What lies beneath

by Silence_Will_Fall201



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Clark and Lois are just sorta there., Elseworlds, Friendship, Just a one shot for Elseworlds, crossover time!, they're not really doing anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 21:01:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16920306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silence_Will_Fall201/pseuds/Silence_Will_Fall201
Summary: Barry Allen learns the hard way that being Oliver Queen comes with a lot of downsides along with the upsides. Oliver Queen learns the same thing about Barry. Kara is there to support them both during this weird time.NOT A SHIP-FIC





	What lies beneath

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little one shot based on a interview I saw where Stephen Amell says that Barry and Oliver start to take on parts of each others personalities as well as their powers and abilities. I thought immediately of Oliver and his never mentioned explicitly but what we can all assume is PTSD and Barry's traumas.

It was a dark night on the Kent Farm in Smallville. After the eventful day Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and Kara Danvers, along with her cousin Clark Kent and his girlfriend Lois Lane, all had, they decided that it would be best that Barry and Oliver spent the night on Earth-38. Kara, Clark and Lois sat up in the kitchen discussing the events of the day, namely the elephant in the room life swap Barry and Oliver experienced, and how they could deal with it, while Barry and Oliver had turned in for the night in two of the Farm house's spare rooms.

Oliver had used up a bit too much energy for the day while using his - well, Barry's - speed, and so fell into maybe the quickest, and the deepest sleep he'd had since Lian Yu. What made it easier was Barry's naturally more at ease mind than his own. It seemed as though that while they had switched lives and abilities, it also seemed like they even switched part of their personalities. This was made evident with Oliver started suddenly speaking more words in a sentence than he had done for quite some time, and Barry suddenly being a bit more pessimistic than his usual self - though in recent years he wasn't as optimistic as he used to be, the difference was still note worthy.

Barry, however, was having a more restless sleep. He lay on his side, curled into a foetal position as he shook, murmuring unintelligible words as flashes of rain and water flooded his mind, accompanied by the ever shocking sound of a gunshot every time a new scene flashed through his head. His senses felt as if they were overrun with the smell of decaying flesh, the sounds of men screaming, parents crying over the death of their young son. Every time he looked at his hands, they were covered with blood as his mind replayed all the things Barry had never experienced. The feeling of sleeping on the bed felt like falling endlessly into the water below, falling endlessly onto the broken body of a man below him, all in a never-ending loop. It all got too much, and in only a second, Barry let out a yell and he stood abruptly, sweat covering his forehead and his breaths fast and shallow. He looked down at his shaky hands, letting out a sigh of relief as they weren't covered in the sickening substance of blood.

Barry walked to the bathroom just down from the room he was staying in, grabbing Oliver's pea coat on the way, and ran the water in the sink as cold as possible before washing his face. He stared at himself in the mirror. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and his complexion seemed paler than normal. He hadn't had an episode like that since his mother was killed. Though, he knew in theory that it wasn't technically him that had the episode. It was Oliver. Barry frowned when he realised that Oliver went through this likely nightly, that Oliver didn't sleep very often.

A knock on the bathroom door got Barry to jump out of his thoughts.

"Barry?" Kara's voice echoed into the tiled bathroom. "Are you okay? I heard you scream." Kara said softly through the door. Barry opened the door and watched Kara's concerned expression, his eyes drifting to the floor.

"I couldn't sleep." He said vaguely.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Kara asked. Barry's instinctual reaction was to say no, but he thought better and nodded. The two moved outside onto the porch of the house, leaning over the railing and watching as the sun began to rise, signalling morning. Barry briefly wondered why Kara, Clark and Lois stayed up all night but pushed the thought away when Kara began to talk. "I didn't know you had nightmares..." She trailed off and Barry smiled tightly.

"Normally, I don't." He sighed. "It's not me." He looked sadly back at the house, Kara realising what he meant.

"Oh." She frowned. "What did you see?"

"Not a lot, really. A lot of water,  _so much water_." Barry looked up to the sky in an exasperated motion before looking back at Kara. "Then there was the smell...flesh, blood, the sounds of screaming, a flash memory of parents crying over their dead son...and blood. A lot of blood." He frowned, "Oliver's been through a lot."

"Obviously..." Kara furrowed her brows. "Why are you experiencing it, though?"

"I think this switch isn't just physical." Barry told her. "I think, in some way, it's also mental. I don't know how, but having Oliver's PTSD and seeing things only he saw shouldn't be something happening to me if it was purely a physical swap."

"Makes sense..." She trailed off quickly before frowning again. "What would Oliver be experiencing?" Barry let out a quick 'oh' and looked to the ground, his expression showing pain and sadness. "That bad, huh?"

"Not nearly as bad as his own hell, not really, but it was mine. My hell." Barry told her honestly.

Oliver's mind was darker than Barry had ever realised, than he ever let anyone realise. While Oliver put on a good farce - and even though he was getting better, gradually - it was entirely likely that he couldn't let old habits die, and that he couldn't stop himself from thinking back, from responding to those thoughts in the way Barry had experienced. It was bad for Barry who had never experienced any of it, but for Oliver it would be ten times worse, at least. Barry felt sorry for Oliver, though he knew Oliver would hate that, and in a way he felt as if he understood the older man better.

 

The door to the house opened and the two turned to see Oliver steeping out to join him. He and Barry had a quick, and silent conversation and Barry muttered to Kara to go back inside. Once she did, Oliver, his hands in the pockets of Barry's canvas jacket, walked over to the railing and leant with his back to the farm. They stood in silence for several moments, both of them finding the right words to say. Oliver broke the tension though, his words cutting the air like a knife.

"I'm sorry." He said. Barry recoiled slightly, confused at the sudden apology, and also for how odd it was for Oliver to lead with one.

"For what?" Barry asked, frowning.

"You've been through a lot. A lot more than you ever told me." Oliver sighed. At Barry's confusion, he gestured wildly to his head and explained vaguely. "I saw some of it...while sleeping. I had some dreams, some nightmares."

"Oh." Was all Barry could get out. "Me too. Mostly nightmares." Oliver chuckled sadly.

"Yeah...how much did you see?" He asked.

"Lian Yu. A bit of Hong Kong." Barry replied with a sigh and shake of his head. "You really need to see a counsellor or something."

"So I've been told." Oliver laughed. "Look, Barry...this switch, whatever it is, obviously isn't just physical."

"I got that pretty quickly." Barry frowned. "What we've seen about each other..." Barry trailed off and eyed Oliver. "Maybe it should stay where it is."

"What? Unhealthily buried and avoided?" Oliver tried to crack a joke, but it ended up sounding slightly sadder than intending.

"I mean..." Barry sighed. "For now. We have to focus on getting everything back to normal."

"Right." Oliver nodded. "Even then...Barry, I'm glad I got to know. I...I understand." He stopped leaning against the railing and faced Barry directly.

"Me too...I understand much better than I did before." Barry let out a sigh. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry for criticising you for shooting a guy with arrows to get information years ago." He laughed decidedly more light-heartedly than he had since the early morning began. "I didn't know the context."

"It's okay." Oliver smiled at him.

They might have swapped lives, but they also ended up understand each other in a way they never would have before. Sometimes stepping in someone else's shoes can be beneficial.


End file.
